Endpiece

No Fishing

"Making the deserts
bloom" is the triumphalist mission of planners convinced that nature wastes her
resources. In correcting this error they have turned many arid lands into
breadbaskets. Forty percent of global agricultural output now relies on
irrigation.

But of course there's no free lunch, and nowhere is
the cost of rampant irrigation clearer than in central Asia's Aral Sea. Dams
and channels divert 120 cubic kilometers per year of water from the Sea's two
feeder rivers into cotton fields and rice paddies. Result: The Aral Sea has
shrunk to one-quarter of its 1960 volume. Ecosystems have been obliterated and
hundreds of species wiped out. Related effects include desertification, soil
salinization, vast dust storms, and altered climate. And in a
robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul irony, commercial fishing collapsed years ago,
stranding a fleet of ghost ships in the spreading desert.